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Two billion kilos more milk import due to shrinking livestock
If the nitrogen plans go ahead, Dutch dairy will import about 2030 billion kilos more milk from Belgium and Germany by 2. This is necessary to compensate for the loss of milk in our own country.
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This was said by Christophe Lafourge, director of market researcher Gira, during the annual meeting of the Belgian dairy organization BCZ/CBL.
Lafourge assumes for his analysis that the Dutch nitrogen plans will be fully implemented. He converts the desired nitrogen emission reduction of 30% into a milk pool reduction of 4 billion kilos. According to him, this loss will not be completely compensated with additional imports, but according to Gira, 50% compensation will be possible.
Taking the purse
To bring in that volume, Dutch dairy will need to go public, which will cause even more competition for milk. However, Gira assumes that dairy companies in the Netherlands can afford this, especially by extracting even more added value from milk. Gira believes that the key to this lies in further valuing dairy ingredients, which require deeper processing. For example, by no longer simply drying whey into whey powder, but by making more whey powder concentrates and whey isolates.
Shopping across the border from Dutch colleagues can have unpleasant consequences for the Belgian and German dairy industries. If the aforementioned 2 billion kilos are taken all the way from Belgium, Belgian dairy would have to miss 46% of the domestic milk pool. Moreover, the milk pool in Belgium is still growing by several percent per year. So maybe the damage isn't too bad. For western Germany, additional milk withdrawal by the Dutch is much less drastic, because at 2 billion kilos this amounts to only 17% of the milk pool.
Enlarged withdrawal area
Various Dutch dairy companies already collect quite a bit of milk in Belgium and Germany. At least four Dutch processors are active in Belgium. Purchasing is slightly less in Germany, but FrieslandCampina, for example, has significantly increased the cooperative collection area in Germany as of June 1 of this year. Especially with a view to the future.
According to Gira, the demand for dairy in general will continue to increase in the coming years. The cause is the still growing world population. The current trend towards more plant-based food in many Western countries will not reverse this. Most of the growth comes from cheese, cream and high-quality ingredients.